Watch the Water Roll Up
by sparrow.marrow
Summary: *Warning this fic contains spoilers for 4x13 Journey's End* She gave a strangled sob and launched herself at him, pounding her fists into his chest. He let her. He let her cry and hit him and fling curses at him. He let her call him a coward and a traitor


Watch the Water Roll Up

"I stood here for five and a half hours last time." She turned to the familiar **_unfamiliar_** man in the blue suit who was standing beside her. "Remember… you… he…" her words trailed off into a jumble of tangled syllables. She looked away from him confused, unable or unwilling to hold his gaze. Gathering her thoughts, she spoke again. Her voice was low and firm, the kind of tone one might use to assert a fact. "I was always supposed to wait five and a half hours."

"I remember," the man in blue said softly, his eyes locked on her profile.

She continued, still refusing to look at him, but keeping a tight hold on his hand. "I made mum and Pete and Mickey wait until the tide came in. Mickey had to tell me off, drag me back to the car. I told him, yelled at him really, just to leave me. I said some terrible things to him, to my mum, even to Pete. They all told me that it wasn't what you would have wanted, me wasting away on a beach in Norway, but… I… " she paused again her gaze sweeping out across the flat sea, "I wanted to die that day."

"I'm sorry." Two simple words were all he had to offer.

She was silent, now staring hard at the place where the TARDIS had dematerialized. The sea, the land reflected her silence, the grey sky mirrored the swirling ocean. The water lapped at the shore, pushing the sand into even ridges, like the roof of a mouth.

"He's not coming back," she whispered. She wasn't speaking to him. She wasn't speaking to anyone in particular. Her words floated into space and were blown away by the breeze.

"No," he replied, "The walls have closed."

She turned to him then, her eyes flashing fire, brown tinged with honey gold, "Would he come back if he could?"

"No."

She paused letting his words sink in, accepting his answer and filing it away. She looked down, studying their intertwined hands, recalling the almost forgotten feel of his fingers interlaced with her own. Her gaze softened, "You loved me then, the last time we were here, he loved me then."

"Oh yes." His face remained impassive, but a little crack in his voice betrayed the depth of his emotion.

"You didn't say it."

"No. I couldn't say it. All I could do was burn up a sun."

She choked back a sob. "And he couldn't say it now."

He shook his head, "No."

"He's not coming back," she repeated, her voice trailing off near the end, stifled by the truth ringing in her words.

He didn't respond, just squeezed her hand. They stood in the wet sand. Water rolled up around their feet, erasing their footprints, _his_ footprints, Donna's footprints, obliterating the heavy square imprint of the TARDIS.

She pulled away from him, disentangling her fingers from his foreign **_familiar_** grip. She wiped at her face, scrubbing away the tears that had started to roll down her cheeks. "This isn't what I had planned. This isn't what I wanted. I travelled _so_ far…"

"I'm sorry." Two simple words were all he had to offer.

She turned to him, suddenly angry, her eyes wet and blazing. "If this hadn't happened, if you… hadn't split, hadn't been… born or created or whatever, would you, would he have taken me with him. Would he have left me here again? Would he have walked away?"

The man in the blue suit hesitated for a moment, his face tight with pain. "Yes, he would have left you again."

"Why!" she burst out.

He gestured helplessly. "Maybe he wouldn't have left you _here_, in this time, in this place, but he would have left you… or - well - you would have left him. Eventually there would have been another good-bye, maybe not right away but - he knows how things end, its how things always end for him - with separation."

She cut him off, abruptly, harshly, "But he loved me… he loves me."

He nodded, his dark eyes locking onto hers. "Forever."

She gave a strangled sob and launched herself at him, pounding her fists into his chest. He let her. He let her cry and hit him and fling curses at him. He let her call him a coward and a traitor. He could feel her tears soaking through the thin blue cotton of his jacket, damp fabric pressing against his new and sensitive skin.

After a few moments, she quieted, clinging to him, desperately clutching this man who _was_ and _is_ and would _never_ be _her_ Doctor. Her heart was beating so fast, so loud, that she was sure that he could hear it over the crashing sound of the tide coming in.

He pulled away, tilting her face up to his. "He did it for your Rose. Everything he does now, everything I did then, it's always been for you. He left you here so that you can have the life he could never give you, have a chance to hear the words that he could never say. This… You…" he whispered, his fingers brushing gently against her cheek, "The one adventure I could never have."

She bit her lip hard to keep fresh tears from spilling down her face. "Tell me that he's not alone, tell me that he won't be lonely."

He shook his head. "I can't."

"You're not him," she cried out desperately, knowing that her words were neither fair nor true.

"I am him in every way that counts. In some ways I am more," he said simply pressing her hand to his chest, where she could feel the steady rhythm of his heart - just one heart now, where there used to be two.

Impulsively **_deliberately_** he bent down and captured her lips with his own, in a kiss that was sweet yet demanding in its intensity. He drank her in and she returned the movements of his tongue, his mouth, letting his warmth fill in some of the empty places in her heart. They broke apart and he cradled her to him, wrapping his long arms tightly around her, molding her body to his.

"You taste like the rain after a storm," she murmured, her face buried in the crook of his neck.

He smiled, a small sad hopeful smile, dropping a gentle kiss on the top of her head. He breathed in deeply, savoring the scent of her, the feel of her in his arms. Leaning down he whispered in her ear, "I need you Rose, and that's very him."


End file.
